Candidates with hands-on infrastructure engineering experience and a deep understanding of distributed systems will find this role in a fast-paced, remote-first startup environment.
Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.
Original posting from Runpod via Ashby
Runpod is the AI Developer Cloud. More than one million developers, from indie researchers to teams running frontier models in production, use Runpod to experiment, train, fine-tune, deploy, and scale AI on one platform. The platform has processed more than 20 billion inference requests. We closed a $100M Series A in June 2026. We're at an inflection point for AI infrastructure, and we're building the platform the next generation of developers will depend on.
We're a small, remote-first team. We take ownership seriously, move fast, and ship work that more than a million developers rely on every day. We're looking for people who care deeply, build with urgency, and want to matter at scale.
Learn more in our CEO's funding announcement: https://www.runpod.io/blog/one-million-developers.
We’re seeking a Technical Program Manager (TPM) who understands how distributed systems are built and why they fail, and pairs that depth with exceptional organizational and communication skills. The ideal candidate is a self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and can drive execution through ambiguity with confidence and clarity.
As a TPM at Runpod, you’ll lead complex, cross-functional programs across product and platform teams, working closely with engineering leads and stakeholders across the company. You’ll help build the core of our cloud platform: the systems that schedule, scale, route, and run customer workloads on GPU infrastructure across regions. You’ll anticipate risks early, keep teams focused on what matters, and deliver high-impact work that creates real value for our customers.
The ideal candidate is a dynamic problem solver - not a pure process follower.
Responsibilities:
- Partner with engineering leads to understand squad architecture, constraints, and technical debt, and build plans that reflect how the systems actually behave.
- Own planning and delivery for complex, multi-team programs: scope, sequencing, dependencies, and timelines, with close attention to cross-service and cross-region dependencies.
- Identify technical risk early (scaling limits, failure modes, capacity constraints, migration complexity) and drive mitigation before it reaches customers or commitments.
- Participate in design and architecture reviews, surfacing gaps in rollout plans, observability, and fault tolerance.
- Drive launch readiness and safe rollout of platform changes, including staged releases, rollback plans, load and failure testing, and operational handoff.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for stakeholders, with clear, regular status updates and risks escalated early alongside options and recommendations.
- Work with Data, Product, and Engineering leads to define and track success metrics for performance, reliability, utilization, and cost, tied to customer outcomes.
- Partner with SRE to build visibility into system health, and help leadership balance investment in reliability, scale, and new capabilities.
- Coordinate with Supply and Data Center teams on how capacity and infrastructure changes affect platform roadmaps.
- Run post-launch and post-incident reviews, and drive the resulting improvements to completion.
Requirements:
- 3+ years in technical program management or software/infrastructure engineering, leading complex programs for cloud or infrastructure products.
- Hands-on engineering experience on production distributed systems, with deep understanding of consistency and availability tradeoffs, queueing, scheduling, autoscaling, load balancing, failure handling, and performance at scale.
- Hands-on familiarity with cloud infrastructure fundamentals: compute, networking, storage, containers and orchestration, and multi-region architectures.
- Ability to read architecture docs, review designs, and hold credible technical conversations with senior engineers, including on reliability, latency, and capacity tradeoffs.
- Experience with observability and operational practices (metrics, logging, tracing, SLOs, incident response) and using them to drive program decisions.
- Proven track record of delivering multiple high-impact programs across 3+ cross-functional teams, from planning through launch.
- Strong quantitative skills, with the ability to turn system and cost data into clear recommendations.
- Deep understanding of the software development lifecycle and how engineering teams design, build, test, and ship production systems.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication, with the ability to align stakeholders across teams and functions.
- Ownership mindset: highly organized, proactive, and calm under pressure, favoring clarity and follow-through over rigid process.
Preferred:
- Previous experience in AI/ML developer platforms or GPU/cloud infrastructure-focused organizations.
- Experience in a fast-paced startup environment.
- Technical degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
What You’ll Receive:
- The competitive base pay for this position ranges from ($140,000 - $165,000). This salary range may be inclusive of several career levels at Runpod and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location
- Meaningful equity in a fast-growing company- everyone on the team receives stock options — your impact drives our growth, and you share in the upside.
- Generous medical, dental & vision plans
- Flexible PTO- take the time you need to recharge
- Most roles are remote work first with an inclusive, collaborative teams utilizing slack as the main form of internal communication
- Join a passionate team on the cutting edge of AI infrastructure — where culture, learning, and ownership are at the heart of how we scale.
- $1,200 Home Office & Equipment Stipend- We set you up for success from day one with gear and support to create your ideal workspace
Runpod is committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and upholding the principles of equality and respect for all individuals. We believe that diversity in all its forms enhances our team. As an equal opportunity employer, Runpod is committed to creating an inclusive workforce at every level. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We welcome every qualified candidate eligible to work in the United States; however, we are currently unable to sponsor employment visas.
Source: Runpod careers (Ashby)